What exactly is a "quark"?

[Falco Girgis]

Everybody says that the smallest particles are atoms when you're young. I always knew they were BSing. Today, somebody raised there hand when the teacher said an atom was the smallest particle and said "What about quarks"? She said "Oh, quarks, gluons, electrons, protons, there are plenty of things smaller, but I'm not going to teach them because they're too confusing".

She listed the subatomic particles: electrons and protons which just totally killed my understanding of quarks. I thought quarks were electrons and protons. If they aren't, what the hell are they?

and gluons?

Tell me about every subsubatomic particle you know. I love this kinda stuff.

[JS Lemming]

Sorry, our school doesn't allow us to learn things.... me might overthrough them again.

[MarauderIIC]

"quark Audio pronunciation of "quark" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (kwôrk, kwärk)
n.

Any of a group of six elementary particles having electric charges of a magnitude one-third or two-thirds that of the electron, regarded as constituents of all hadrons."

To summarize some really quick google, they make up protons, neutrons, and electrons (which are a few hadrons). There are six different quarks, which are known as "flavors." up, down, top, bottom, charm, and strange. We touched on this a little in chemistry class. Whoever named them decided to have a bit of fun with the scientific community, it seems >D

in order of what i hit -
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=quark
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=U ... gle+Search
http://www2.slac.stanford.edu/vvc/theory/quarks.html

[Falco Girgis]

Hey, thanks, Mar.